State Senate Dems Should Not Compromise on Sound Transit Taxing Authority

In a nod to the populous Pierce, King and Snohomish counties, the package also includes authority for Sound Transit to ask voters for up to an estimated $11 billion in new taxes to expand the light-rail system. Advocates say that amount falls $4 million short of their request. This is a time for everyone to compromise.

Oh god, where to start? First, maybe with the fact that the Sound Transit taxing authority in the package falls $4 billion short—billion with a “b”—not $4 “million” as the editors report. Yes, it’s just a typo, I know (or at least I hope), but you’re the editorial page of the largest daily in the state, for chrisakes, so I mean, fuck.

Second, “a nod to the populous Pierce, King and Snohomish counties” … really? You mean a nod to more than half the population of the state? And not a nod, exactly—more like a middle finger. Sound Transit asked for $15 billion in authority, because that’s how much it figures it needs, and the Republican controlled senate says, “Fuck you, you’ll get $11 billion and thank us for it!” Based on what?

Which brings us to my third point: It’s not their money, and it’s none of their fucking business! We’re not asking for $15 billion. We’re asking for permission to ask local voters for permission to tax themselves to build the transit system they need. It’s not like we’re a fucking welfare queen like Sen. King’s Yakima County, greedily suckling at the state taxpayers’ teat. We here in King County send $1.61 to Olympia for every dollar we get back. All we’re asking for, after subsidizing the rest of the fucking state, is to be allowed to tax ourselves to take care of our own needs for a change. How hard is that?

Now, if this were a fight over which tax to fund the transportation package, or how much to tax, or how those limited tax revenues should be divvied up amongst the 39 counties, then yeah, I suppose we all need to compromise, because the final deal would impact all the voters in the state. A dollar spent here is a dollar that’s not spent there, after all. But that isn’t this fight. This is just envious Republicans outside of the prosperous Puget Sound region intentionally fucking with us, just because. The goal is to set Sound Transit up for failure by forcing it to propose a sales tax heavy package that doesn’t build enough in each subarea to attract a majority of voters. Just like they did to Metro by denying it MVET authority.

So no, this is not a time for everyone to compromise, at least not on this issue. Adequate ST taxing authority should be a precondition of any transportation funding package. Enough of their fucking games. If they want Democrats to take the heat for voting to raise everybody’s gas tax, then they need to give us the local taxing authority we want and need. Period. Otherwise, the senate Republicans should use their precious majority to pass this package themselves.

There’s always the possibility ST asked for $15B because they knew that they’d get less, that they had future federal grants to make up any shortfall, and that they might not end up spending $15B, anyway.

Or maybe it IS because eastern WA Republicans are jealous. Just because.

@1 Federal grant money is a crapshoot, and there’s a reason why the previous phases where around $15 billion… it’s what was needed to propose a package that did enough in each of the subareas to attract a sufficient number of voters.

Sure, ST could come up with an $11 billion package—they might have anyway, even given up to $15 billion in authority. But this lower number intentional hamstrings the agency and inevitably slows down the already glacial expansion of regional light rail.

As far as hamstringing is concerned, the same link mentions that $9B of taxes will support $15B worth of projects, because the remainder would come from bonds, if the ST spokesperson was accurately quoted. I didn’t bring this up @ 1 because I wasn’t certain that the state isn’t also limiting ST’s ability to issue bonds and I didn’t want to subject myself to another Darryl smackdown for sloppy work. But perhaps you could weigh in on this. If ST needs $15B and if that could be had by $9B in taxation and the rest in bonds or crapshoot-to-likely federal funds, wouldn’t the $11B in taxing authority, er…

I guess the one additional comment I would make is that the $15B includes increases to account for higher costs in future years of expenditure, going out more than a decade.

Since the 2016 election will be a Clintonian wave election in which the WA state senate’s GOP members will be nearly wholly replaced by FOB Democrats, wouldn’t $11B get enough projects started, and increases in taxation authority can always be had in future years?

Not getting everything you want at the precise moment you want it isn’t the end of the world.

@4 You’re talking about a massive infrastructure project that takes 15 years to plan and build, and 30 years to pay off the bonds. You can’t do that by coming back to voters every few years asking for more money. Or at least, you can’t do that efficiently.

You can’t do that by coming back to voters every few years asking for more money.

I think it depends on the reason you’re coming back. If you’re coming back with project A complete and project B halfway done and you’re asking for money to begin project C, that’s one thing. If you’re coming back a third time because you fucked up project A to the point that yet another cash infusion is needed so you can provide half of what you initially promised, that’s another.

You got me there. I suppose it depends on what state law holds. If ST is currently taxing the maximum permissible sales tax under the law, does the state lift this maximum just for ST? Or does the state lift it for all similar entities and if so, are all others financially worthy of being allowed to take more money from people?

There might be another factor in play here, and that’s the Seattle area’s current real-estate boom. I just read that the folks in Port Townsend got only three bids for an addition to Jefferson County Hospital that were all in excess of what they’d budgeted. One of the hospital board members came to Seattle last week and counted 51 tower cranes. Add such factors as that 120-foot concrete-lined hole to rescue “Bertha”, and it seems the folks in the hard hats are pretty busy these days.

I don’t disagree with that. But I suppose that the state’s involvement, perhaps to guard against overreach, might be particularly important in respect to ST for the very reason you mentioned – its size is uniquely huge.

Suppose something catastrophic were to occur, and ST found itself in way, way, way over its head financially.

Who steps in? I would argue that the state does. No one from the federal level is on the ST BOD. It’s very likely the state’s responsibility, including the taxpayers in King’s Yakima County.

Wouldn’t the state have an interest in minimizing the cost of having to step in should something really awful occur? Expecting ST to move in a stepwise manner would seem to be a way of mitigating that risk.

I just don’t see the problem of a barrier to an entity getting everything it wants up-front. It still gets quite a lot and if the other funding sources come through then it DOES get what it wants.

@11 Now you’re just pulling speculation out of your ass. Sound Transit is its own municipal entity; the state has no legal or financial obligation to bail it out, and you can be sure that there wouldn’t be the votes in Olympia to bail it out regardless. For precedent, look to the public facilities district that built Wenatchee’s boondoggle arena—folks tried to push a bailout bill through the legislature, and failed. District went into default.

Also, ST is issuing revenue bonds; the taxes authorized are dedicated to paying off the bonds. If they fuck up in construction, the thing doesn’t get built, but taxes are collected anyway to pay off the bonds. Taxes are collected for several years before issuing bonds, to build up a sufficient reserve, but even in the event that a major recession were to push tax revenues below what’s needed to make debt payments, ST could always refinance—the taxes stay in place until the debt is paid off. That’s the way these things work.

That’s very different from, say, the Wenatchee arena, in which revenue from the arena was pledged to pay off the bonds, not something reliable like taxes.

So no. No risk to the rest of the state other than the further betterment of Seattle.

In case you didn’t go to the link, here’s Northwest Progressive Institute’s summary of what’s wrong with the GOP “compromise” plan, addition to shorting Sound Transit:

1) It takes money from education to fund transportation; 2) It has provides no money to replace the I-5 bridge across the Columbia River; 3) “Senate Republicans have included language that would redirect state funding vanpools, rural transit, special-needs grants, and pedestrian/bicyclist safety measures to highways in the event that Governor Jay Inslee pursues stronger fuel standards for vehicles to fight pollution;” 4) It’s anti-labor by attacking the “prevailing wage” rule applicable to state construction contracts.

You knew, of course, without looking that anything the GOPers ginned up would be anti-worker and lower-wage. That goes without saying. And that little poison pill, all by itself, probably means this transportation bill is DOA in the Democratic caucus. And now you also know why the labor-hating Seattle Times endorsed it.

[…] that Democrats collectively have the balls to stand up in defense of labor, the environment, and transit—should be sent to voters with two options: A) a gas tax hike, or B) a carbon tax. If we really […]

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